.. Four to go.

Cattle didn’t go as well as I had hoped. I probably got through but I like cattle, though my experience with them has left me feeling a little short changed. I went to cow places, but the cows just weren’t sick for me. So I knew mostly what things were, how they worked, but perhaps not how long you ave before you can treat, for example.

I’ve always seen cattle as big obstetrical units anyway I suppose. I probably knew enough, but it didn’t feel as confident as I did on my first exam.

Spent the afternoon sitting on the grass discussing ferrets, cardiology and colic. Then played mariokart for the second time ever.

Categories: Exams, Veterinary student
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First exam done and out of the way. Five left to go.

The sheep oral exam went well but was a little strange - I mostly talked about management and how to run a profitable business growing wool. I only got to mention one disease (flystrike) very briefly in relation to mulesling before the topic was wisked away from me and back to ‘how to make money out of sheep’.

When I started this course I expected it to be mostly about animals, their diseases, and how to fix or prevent them. As the years went by I realised that a large chunk of animal medicine (except for dogs and cats), is how to make these animals most efficient and turn them into money. It draws on some veterinary knowledge, but it’s certainly not veterinary medicine. Sheep vets can affect the lives of more sheep in a day than I could in a year, but it’s not what I had in mind when I thought ‘I want to be a vet’.

Still, I’m confident I passed that exam (and told them more about mulseling than they probably wanted to know). Five to go.

Categories: Exams, Veterinary student
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I was given the challenge of writing about hepatitis in horses, acute vs chronic, and their causes treatment and prognosis. Here we go.

One of the most often quoted signs of hepatitis (or serious liver issues) is jaundice, aka turning yellow. I don’t have a picture of a jaundiced horse, but I do have a picture of a jaundiced cat.

The inside of his ear was yellow, his little nose was yellow (not pink), and the whites of his eyes were not white, but yellow. Horses can also turn yellow if jaundiced, but will sometimes turn yellow just because they haven’t eaten in a while, making it not so reliable.

Show me more… »

Categories: Diseases, Livestock
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On a much needed ice-cream sundae break from study, a bunch of us went down to the local McDonalds to get a chocolate fix. While we were sitting outside, a local bogan with a fetish for cars drove past very slowly, Duff Duff music shaking every piece of glass in the carpark. The car was bouncing, and he wound his window down to look at us as he cruised past.

I started to laugh- he looked so ridiculous and thought he was being ‘the shiz’. He went to say something, but a car in the carpark pulled out in front of him, forcing him to slam on the breaks. I laughed harder. The rest of the table joined in (about 7 of us). He sat there watching us laugh at him until the car in front drove away, at which point his car screamed and raced away (for a whole 25 metres before stopping) in a stench of burning rubber.

*sigh*. Werribee.

Categories: Veterinary student
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So, I could be asked basically anything in the next lot of exams. Anything I’ve ever studied, or anything that’s important for an Australian vet to know. That’s quite a big list.

So go on, ask me something. Ask and it shall be written.

Categories: Veterinary student
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